Heat current limiter and constant heat current source

Abstract

Current limiters and constant current sources, which play important roles in electronic circuits, have been built up for many decades. Their thermal counterparts, heat current limiters and constant heat current sources, are still not available yet. By combining two typical nonlinear lattices, the Frenkel-Kontorova (FK) lattice and a coupled rotator lattice, together, we present by numerical simulation a model that displays complete negative differential thermal resistance (NDTR). Namely, in a wide regime, the heat current that flows through this model is always a decreasing function of the temperature drop applied to it, no matter whether the change in the temperature drop is due to a change in the high or the low temperature. We show that, upon being properly set up, a complete NDTR can work as either a heat current limiter or a constant heat current source. © 2012 American Physical Society.